January 4, 2009 – New song.
Can a deadline be a motivator? It works for us. In late January we’ll be down in L.A. getting new angles on songwriting with Pat Pattison at an ASCAP-sponsored event. We might need to present a new song that is "in-the-works," for critical analysis and improvement by the group, so we put together three little sketches that Frances had written years ago. They were just short lines of words set to little tunes with basic chords. But arranging them in order of increasing tempo and leading story-line, then against a piano accompaniment that morphs from spooky bluesy jazz verses to perkier bridges to sprightly quasi-country choruses – we gave the medley a unity that had been hard to imagine before. Now, having improved the lyrics that we throw to each other, having harmonized the hooks, and having made a rough demo … the song may be too far along to be called “in-the-works.” Funny how the birth process for babies and songs wants to run all the way to completion. We may need to dig out something else that needs rewriting for L.A., like "Old Pete And The Big Cat." The new song demo is too rough to share now, but we’ll be producing it for your enjoyment before we put on our live show that is in-the-works for this summer.
~ Tim
January 4, 2009 – Kitty.
.. Seven years ago or so, three tiny kittens showed up on our back porch. We fed the feral momma cat and ran off the mean cat-food-thieving chickens. Feral cats up against feral chickens.
.. Today, the third day of 2009, I cooked three pieces of chicken (made in China) for the remaining cat, Kitty. The Daddy Cat went off to die a couple of months ago. He had stayed with the litter all those years after the momma left, after the litter was weaned. He had been somebody’s pet; he let me scratch his ears; I even picked him up, though he didn’t really like it. We paid attention to Daddy Cat, let him in for treats, bought him a little house; he moved right in.
.. But he got old. Toward the end Daddy Cat was bullied by those mean chickens. Kitty stayed by his side, followed him around, protected him. After he died Kitty came around meowing, motioning for me to follow her. She missed him. Now she’s our cat, lets me scratch her ears, gets under my feet. She’s a calico; they’re almost always female. When the cold weather started I made a shelter over our back porch, put a nice rug and a soft towel in the cat house. A week later, cold at night, rain, no Kitty. Tim rigged up a heat lamp to keep it warm and cozy. No dice. Two weeks later, still no dice.
.. One very dark, very cold, very wet night I peeked out the window. She looked right at me, out of her house. Sometimes she stays out in the neighborhood till about eleven, and sometimes she’s home as early as 6:30.
~ Frances
January 3, 2009 – Christmas show picture taken Dec. 19, 2008: Cast and crew of El Teatro Campesino's La Virgen Del Tepeyac in Old Mission San Juan Bautista, California.
Warning: This is a 2.5 megabyte file that could tie up a dial-up connection for a while. But the picture is a high-resolution glimpse into an amazing traidition that has been staged here for decades of holiday seasons. Click here to download.
December 25, 2008 – Follow-up to the Caspar Inn story of Dec. 6, 2008.
Tim: Our Christmas trip up to Mendocino county, California, was going to span four days, from Tuesday to Friday. Frances only booked lodging for Tuesday and Wednesday nights though, keeping the plan loose. Then she cancelled the first night, on the hope that we could meet with Bruce Anderson, editor and publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser newspaper in Boonville on Christmas Eve, saving the expense of a night’s lodging. So we packed Tuesday night, set the alarm for 5 o’clock, and got out of the house by 6:30 AM. We drove slowly, and five hours later we were swapping stories with Bruce and major contributor Mark Scaramella. Bruce traded a copy of his new book, The Mendocino Papers, Vol. 1, for a copy of our new CD, Good Morning San Juan. By 12:30 we were on the road again, ticking off our list of people to call and see.
Frances: Caspar Inn. 3:30 PM. We pull up and park on the side of the building to be out of the way of the Christmas Eve revelers who might show up. The place is dark, drizzled in rain. 4 o’clock, a pickup stops in front, a man gets out, goes into the building, leaves it locked. We knock. No answer, no sign of life. We drive off, visit a friend, come back at 6 o’clock, the place is deserted. We go north through Fort Bragg, out Pudding Creek, to see our old friends, a French family á la vaudeville troupe of interacting performers as a way of life. 8 o’clock we’re back at the Caspar Inn. It’s still closed up tight.
Tim: "Let’s get a motel."
Frances: "Let’s go home."
Tim: We leave the Mendocino area about 8:15, drive in the rainy dark, cozy in the warm car, down the coast to Highway 128. Water hitting the windshield and bouncing off the road, local apples to munch and tangerines, the surprise compression of our visit from 4 days down to 7 hours … we marvel aloud at the shared sense of timing we discovered 28 years ago when we were married in Mendocino, the excitement of "galloping away". We’ll be back, one of these bright days. But now we’re in our favorite little spot on the planet, San Juan Bautista, writing more words and music: for the web site, for the next recording release, and for the live show we're planning for 2009.
December 20, 2008 – My dad was a Republican...
...and vocal around the dinner table about the critical importance of individual freedom and responsibility … until (decades ago) it seemed to him that Republicans had strayed from their core ideology and now differed from Democrats only on “feel-good” issues like curtailing abortion and promoting a Christian state religion, which had nothing to do with freedom nor survival of the union. That’s when he switched parties to Libertarian. He hated the idea of the government going into debt "on his behalf," which he saw as an oxymoron. He hated the invasion of privacy that was legalized under the 16th Amendment to support the Income Tax. Corporate welfare and personal welfare were repugnant to him. Government’s primary domestic function should be protection of the individual from oppression by the majority; he described himself as Jeffersonian. He supported Civil Rights, religious rights, abortion rights, gay rights, suicide rights, the right to bear arms and use fireworks and drugs (which he never took.) But all this came with the provisos that (1) one person’s rights do not authorize behavior that infringes upon the rights of others, and (2) individual rights trump corporate rights. It sounded reasonable to my young ears, with no experience as to the way a person’s behavior impinges on others increasingly as the group becomes larger and more crowded. It was a pioneer’s ideology, a personal keel for steering a straight course in the wilderness, but increasingly out of touch with the shoulder-to-shoulder interdependency of city life, global life. I was kept in the dark about salaries (how much did he make in the business-machines business?) and about our mortgage payments and household budgeting, and about how to stand up and confidently address a group of people who may disagree with you? These were things he dealt with more or less routinely and figured I’d learn when the time came, just as he had learned. But he learned much earlier in life, having grown up as a plumber’s son during the Great Depression, when a little butter on your bread was a big treat. And delivering papers in the snow at three in the morning was a precious job for an eleven-year-old, contributing to his family's survival, not cruelty. (The Big Chill story is coming soon to this site.) And preaching a gospel of divine mercy to a congregation of Calvinists was a valuable trial by fire. I had an easy childhood, and felt pretty useless right up until I jumped into the US Air Force in a flight from adolescence into adulthood. On this subject, I highly recommend a recent article [click below] by a man with whom I disagreed mightily during the 1990’s, but who claimed my respect for (dare I say it?) a certain integrity. Like my Dad. (By the way, I think an idea can help you leap over obstacles and empower behavior contrary to expediency for achieving the nearly-impossible. An idea can help you lose weight or can launch a new song. But taken to extremes of abstraction, ideas can empower beastly behavior and worse. Beauty and survival are in the balance.)
Opinion by Newt Gingrich
~ Tim
December 13, 2008 – Tim takes on the Economy.
The surprise is that in my lifetime the Federal Government ran billions of dollars in the black, and congress did not jump to reduce taxes fast enough to eliminate that nasty surplus before it took a nibble out of our lovely national debt. What makes America attractive? I asked my Vietnamese friend why he risked his life in 1975 and got caught trying to escape Saigon, went to jail for nine months, and then risked his life again the following year, this time in a tortuous but ultimately successful effort to get to the USA. Without hesitation he said, “America is where you can get rich.” No mention of purple mountains majesty or amber waves of grain or jazz and rock-and-roll music or liberty-and-justice-for-all. It's pretty clear that paying off debt has never been a national priority and never will be. NOT paying for Uncle Sam's goods and services is what being rich and living the high life is all about. The Democrats spend first, then try to figure out how to pay for it, against Republican opposition. The Republicans reduce taxes first, and then try to figure out how to reduce spending, against Democratic opposition. They both fail of course. So Federal debt only goes up, except for brief unforeseen up-sets. When (not “if”) global investors get worried enough about USA solvency that they flee in droves from the dollar, there is a time-honored solution. Painful but quick, like a punch in the stomach: Devaluation. Then you can either fork over 100,000 old dollars for a little compact car or 15,000 “new” dollars; either way you will run through your savings faster and live lower on the hog. How would you prepare for devaluation, if you were so inclined? Own something of perpetual value that you can sell at the new exchange rate. It's highly un-American to hold value, of course; isn't this supposed to be a consumer economy? It’s a very old story, a centuries-old snoozer. That must be why I don't see this idea in the news these days.
~ Tim
December 6, 2008 – Booking a room at the Caspar Inn.
The day before yesterday I tried to book lodging at the Caspar Inn, Caspar, California, for December 23 and 24th. The youngish-sounding man said, “Are you sure you wanna stay here? It’s pretty loud, we have reggae bands and stuff like that.”
“I’m sure.”
He looks at the books. “Sorry but the 23rd is taken. You can have the 24th.”
“What kind of music will be there on the 24th?”
He looks it up. “Acoustic.”
“That’s great. Do you want my credit card information?”
“I can’t take it. Give me your phone number and somebody will call you.”
No call.
Today I called again, message machine full. Neither email address worked.
I called again later and told the story to a different man. “We don’t take credit cards.”
“Should I send you a check?”
“No, just show up.”
“How can we be guaranteed the room?”
He looks at the book. “Your name’s right here.”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“I’m the owner.”
“It’s great that you still do things the old way. I can’t wait to get there.”
~ Frances
November 27, 2008 – Thanksgiving thoughts.
Dress rehearsal went well last night in the old San Juan mission church for the Christmas show "La Virgen del Tepeyac" that opens for a ~20 show run tomorrow night. A few missteps but no big bloopers, and the inspiration underpinning the tradition (decades with this theater company in this space, but hundreds of years on this continent and far longer in the broader sense of human celebration with story, music and dance for a higher cause) is very much alive and well. The flagging world economy is not the big story after all, it will be forgotten in a few lifetimes or less. The big story is the miraculous little people we call kids (there are many in this show) and the way they keep learning to offer their hopeful, innovative energy through refined behaviors, arts and sciences to the community of people and the whole living planet. Renewal. Kudos to all parents, teachers and sponsors who guide children into the means of constructive self-expression, especially in resonance with the grand thrust of history that seeks to perfect the social balance of values for survival of the tribe and full realization of the individual's potential. (Thanks for the piano and cello lessons, Mom.)
~ Tim
November 16, 2008 – Post-Taxi Road Rally convention boost.
A big hotel overtaken by songwriters, performers, industry people and instructors ... a red-letter 3-day weekend on the path of GallopAway's canter into relevance ... and a ton of fun. Now a week later, it's follow-up email's, to-do lists, and all-day rehearsals for the big annual Christmas show in San Juan Bautista www.elteatrocampesino.com which involves more than 60 performers this year. Venue: the old 1797 mission church; it will be our 9th season. Back to GallopAway - Songwriting in a country vein, for Pete's sake: Frances working on "Give My Lips Something To Live For" and Tim finishing "Old Pete And The Big Cat." She needs his help in a contrasting "B" part; he needs her help in the heart-line between the Pete and Veronica characters ... it's story-telling with attractive tension and humor ... recording productions to begin early in 2009. On yet another front, Frances will be posting more stories on our GallopAway Memories page before Christmas. Stay tuned!
~ Tim
